Off The Radar
by inbox
Summary: A short fluffy New Years Eve ficlet written for the Fallout Kink Meme. Arcade/Boone.


The crowds and the noise at The Tops was overwhelming. Travellers and troops and gamblers and ghouls crowded across the floors, a seething mass of people made merry with high spirits and stronger spirits. Midnight had long since passed and Arcade's head reeled with drink and conversation, but a small niggling thought at the back of his mind wouldn't quite fade away.

He was missing something. Or someone. There was someone on his list of people to hug and kiss – genteelly or lasciviously, he was a little flexible about that at the moment – who was missing, and now that he was aware of it, it baited him and nagged at his attention like a hole in a tooth.

Someone who wasn't here. Who wasn't here? Courier was here. Veronica and Cass were here, and he'd caught them by the waists and swung them around like something from an old movie hours back. Not them. Raul hadn't attended in the first place, holed up in his shack for the past month citing too many poor memories at this time of year. Lily was in Jacobstown, and like the good pseudo grandson he was, he'd dutifully pressed a kiss to her leathery cheek a week ago and made appropriate promises to behave like a good boy. He'd kissed Julie and hugged that Chairman fellow and turned down the advances from that NCR embassy secretary three times.

That left... who was left?

Oh.

_Oh_.

–

The bed dipped as he sat down a little gracelessly. The stuffy air in the elevator had left him with a head that spun and swirled, and even a quiet moment idling in the hallway hadn't quite swung him back into a state of equilibrium. He'd certainly made a strong acquaintance with the door frame a few moments ago.

"Hi," he said, and smiled with just a little more teeth than was probably appropriate. It was a good bed. Totally not rocking and rolling underneath him at all. _S'always good when a bed doesn't move unless you're actively making it do so_, he decided.

Boone dipped the corner of his magazine just enough to nod.

Arcade chose to soldier on, broaching the thicket of silence with the sort of enthusiasm that came naturally to him after an unquantifiable number of vodkas laced with some rather dubious agave syrup. "You left early?"

There was a vague shrug that might have meant _maybe_. A long moment passed, a page or two were turned.

To hell with it. Arcade said something about a New Year's kiss, launched himself forward and hoped he was in line to press a kiss on the corner of Boone's mouth and not do something hard to explain like, oh, accidentally breaking his nose. He'd seen Boone putting away just as much hooch as he had before he'd dropped off the radar, so it was a considerable surprise to feel him drop the magazine and catch Arcade's shoulders before the bigger man could crunch into his chest and knock the wind out of him.  
He pushed him away enough to twist just a little and catch Arcade's lips properly. If they'd kissed that first time all those months ago, this is what Arcade imagined it would have been like. A little messy, a little sloppy, and one of the few times Arcade let someone else do the metaphorical driving. Boone tasted like toothpaste and tobacco leaves he chewed. Arcade thought he must taste like a distillery.

"Hey," said Boone in a gruff voice. "Said I was leaving after midnight. Not very good at parties."

There was a long pause before Arcade shamefacedly confessed that no, he didn't remember him saying that at all. Boone merely chuckled and gave Arcade's dead weight a push until he was, more or less, sitting upright.

"What're you doing back? Thought you'd go 'til dawn."

Arcade burped and pressed a hand to his mouth. _Well and truly marinated_, he thought blearily. _If you set a match next to me I could probably take up firebreathing_.

"I think I've passed the drunk event horizon," he said, and felt the bed pitch and heave a little as if to agree with him. "It was my expert medical opinion that I should go to bed before I did something regrettable."  
There was a slight pause as he mentally ran a slideshow of his evening, then amended his sentence to 'something more regrettable'. There was a a rather sweet if not dull NCR MP going to have a crisis of sexuality in the morning, judging by how he'd responded to Arcade's flirting at the bar.

It wasn't like he was deliberately flirting with the kid, honestly. A drunk Arcade Gannon was just a general beacon of flirtatiousness who turned on the charm to everyone regardless of gender. His friends assured him that they just got used to it after a while and tuned him out, although Veronica often said Arcade after four whiskies was the best cheap boost to her ego she could find in the desert. If there hadn't been a unspoken yet complete agreement to keep their occasional assignations – activities? proclivities? it'd do for now until he was sober enough to craft an appropriate analogy – very, _very_ private, Boone might have silently agreed with her.

"They'll be home soon," said Boone. "Can't play doctor tonight." He swung out of bed and, with much effort, managed to get Arcade onto the nearest sofa before he passed out, face planted firmly into the cushions and one leg dragging on the floor.

–

When Arcade woke up hours later with a mouth full of trail dust and a head full of Cazadores, one of the first things he noticed – once the room stopped spinning and Veronica stopped laughing from the safety of her own bed, far across the room and out of harms way - was his glasses neatly folded on the small side table. There was a bottle of water next to them, and behind that was tucked a fresh apple.

It was, he decided, both the perfect start to a new year _and_ the best silent declaration of care he'd received in a long, long time.


End file.
